PAGES:

Thursday, May 10, 2012

From the Fall/Winter catalogs

The majority of the Fall/Winter catalogs from the university presses are available now, and I just wanted to mention a trio of selections. Larry Daniel's new battle history will be published in November by LSUP and is titled Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland. Forgotten, eh?

The William C. Davis blurb to Henry Laver's A General Who Will Fight: The Leadership of Ulysses S. Grant (Kentucky, Nov) asserts that it "could become the book on Grant's generalship". I don't think anyone would rate Davis, or fellow blurber James Ramage, as Grant experts, and books like this are common and rarely offer fresh ideas, but I am intrigued nonetheless.

Finally, there's Rick Sauers and Peter Tomasak's The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance(Missouri, Sept). Excepting the NYC draft riots, the study of armed resistance to conscription in the North lags far behind that of the Confederacy. I was first exposed to the unrest in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, and the military expedition launched to suppress it, with Robert Sandow's excellent Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians (Fordham, 2009), a brief work covering resistance in the ten county "lumber region" of north-central Pennsylvania, but The Fishing Creek Confederacy is the first book length study of the Columbia County situation.

Don,Overall, so far anyway, I think the output from the presses has been much closer to business as usual than some kind of hoped for Sesquicentennial-inspired publishing blitz.

UTP is typically among the last to put out their seasonal catalogs, but they usually put up a list on their site before then. I'm hoping we'll see the first T-M volume from their western Confederate generals series of essay books soon.

I was hoping the Sesquicentennial would produce an increase in what I would classify as important works. Campaign studies, regimentals and biographies.

Some campaigns have been fully covered and don't seem to require a new look. While others, are begging for something new. For example, Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Georgia Campaign, Seven Days battles, etc would seem to be ready for something new. I realize Winston Groom has just had something published on Shiloh, but ..... I understand that there is going to be a new study of Antietam released soon.

Of course many others, Fredericksburg, Corinth, Gettysburg, 2nd Manassas, Perryville, Battle of Atlanta, etc have had recent studies done by very qualified authors.

One publisher that is stepping up and filling some of these voids is Savas. With their recently published South Mountain study and their upcoming books on Winchester, Bethel and Chickamauga Civil War enthusiasts will be well served.

I do fully agree with your comments on UT Press. Their recently published books of essays are great. I would like to see other subjects in this new series, but the upcoming list of essay titles and authors lined up to write them is very impressive.

Nice to hear from your reader Chris. I just saw on Johns Hopkins University Press Fall 2012 catalog that the first volume of Scott Hartwig's Maryland Campaign study will be out in October. The first volume covers up to the Battle of Antietam. Including Harpers Ferry and South Mountain. Looks like a monumental study.